Monday, January 23, 2017

This
is the sixteenth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly
10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their
creativity. For the complete rationale, click here.

My Thoughts:

You
don’t have to go very far to seek inspiration. For example, your closet of
clothing is packed with possibilities. In this week’s exercise, you will use
the emotions and memories attached to a piece of clothing as your starting
point. Clothes evoke attachment, and are the bearers of sweet and painful
memories. Like music, they are a powerful jumping off point for writing. This
exercise is adapted from Michael Smith and Suzanne Greenberg’s writing exercise,
“Quilting” (p. 63-66).

Your Turn!

Go through your closet and locate pieces
of clothing that were significant to you at a certain points in your life.
To get the pen moving, make a simple list that includes the clothing and
the event/day when you wore it. Also jot down a few words about the
feelings of that day.

Choose one of the items from your list. Scan
your memory to make a second list or freewrite containing the details you
remember about that day. Describe the event, the weather. Who was there
and who was not there? How did you physically feel in the clothing, and
how were you emotionally feeling? How did you acquire that piece of
clothing and why did you choose to wear it that day? What was significant
about that day? What led up to it and what happened after?

Now circle the “moments of heat” (lines
in your freewrite/list that are emotionally packed). Use one of these
moments as your starting off point for a poem, story or essay. If you’re
ever feeling stuck when you think about how to begin an actual piece of
writing, don’t stare at the white page. Simply add another layer of
brainstorming to your process. For example, try simply writing the story
of that day by beginning with the moment of heat.

How did you do? Did the
multiple brainstorming steps lead you to discover an interesting or poignant truth
about that day? Were you able to incorporate details about the clothing which
added depth to your piece, grounding the emotions in concrete details?

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign
in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment boxes
below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the
"Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email
update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!

Sunday, January 15, 2017

This
is the fifteenth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly
10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their
creativity. For the complete rationale, click here.

My Thoughts:

Sometimes
being creative feels like a matter of finding inspiration. Sometimes finding
inspiration means taking yourself out of your usual pattern in order to witness
something different than what you see everyday. This week, you’ll find
inspiration by entering the different world of an old photograph.

Your Turn!

Take yourself on a date to a place that
has old photographs. A museum will do, but even better is a coffee shop
that has old books lying around, or an older relative’s home where you can
peruse old photo albums.

Make yourself comfortable and look
through the photos until you come across one that gives you pause.

Freewrite for 10 minutes about its
story. What was happening the day this photo was taken? Who and what were
not included in the frame; what was standing outside the shot and why?
Your freewrite can take the form of sentences as prose, or you can
brainstorm and list words and phrases like a poem. The goal is to keep
your hand moving. Whatever comes out of your pen is just creating space
for even better ideas to come. Feel free to speculate and imagine to construct
a reality that may or may not be true.

How did you do? Did you
enter a different world while freewriting, the world of the photo? Did your
mind loosen up to imagine and create details of the moment the photo was taken?
How did you feel after the exercise- engaged, alert, peaceful? These feelings
are the telltale signs of what some might call “inspiration” and others call “being
in the flow.”

To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign
in from a google account so you can share your creation in the comment boxes
below. Also, if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the
"Follow this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email
update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!

Sunday, January 8, 2017

This
is the fourteenth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly
10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their
creativity. For the complete rationale, click here.

My Thoughts:

There’s
something inherently fun about collecting beautiful things. For this week’s
exercise, it’s not artwork or seashells or new shoes you will be pocketing;
it’s metaphors. One of the steps to becoming a good writer is reading a lot, While
reading, you are constantly exposing yourself to the craft. Consciously and
subconsciously, your mind is picking up craft elements. Therefore, to get
better at writing great metaphors, we must first read beautiful metaphors.

Your Turn!

1.This week’s activity is going to be a ubiquitous task hanging around you
all week. That is, you can’t simply sit down for 10 minutes and hunt for
metaphors. Instead, I want you to pay attention all week to what you read and
hear and be specifically aware of metaphors. Underline one in the book you are
reading for pleasure. Circle one in the newspaper article you read in the
morning. Jot one down from the radio, TV show, or podcast you listen to. Watch
a movie, and listen for a metaphor. Try to collect at least three striking
metaphors.

2. In your notebook, write out the cool metaphors in longhand.

For example, here are two that I found this week in the
book I am reading for my book club book, News
of the World by Paulette Jiles:

·“She had been laced into a thing that she could only imagine was for
magical purposes, meant to confine her heart and her breath in a sort of cage
to hold her forever like a shut fist that would never open.” (a 10-year-old Native American girl referring
to the corset she had been put into by white people.)

·“There was a half-moon waxing and it seemed to run in reverse between
cascading clouds that flowed together and then pulled apart and then ran
together again.”

3. Keep this Metaphor Bank page running in your notebook even after this
week’s exercise. Stay aware of the metaphors you come across, and keep jotting
down the beautiful ones. Write them out longhand. Say them aloud. Memorize
them. Study them. What makes them work so well?

How did you do? Did you enjoy the process of copying down in longhand beautiful
metaphors created by other Creatives? Did you savor their language and images?

To
encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign in from a
google account so you can share your creation in the comment boxes below. Also,
if you subscribe to this blog (submit your email address in the "Follow
this Site by Email" box to the right), you will get an email update
whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!

Biography

Caroline N. Simpson is an English teacher by vocation, and a creative spirit and global adventurer at heart. She has taught English literature at international schools in Ankara, Izmir, and Erzurum, Turkey, as well as Barcelona, Spain. She currently teaches English for Academic Purposes at Edmonds Community College in Lynnwood, WA. She loves outdoor adventure, learning about other cultures, and of course writing. She has a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. She studied poetry at the Ezra Pound Center for Literature in Merano, Italy, the Hugo House, Seattle, WA, and playwriting at the Einhorn School of Performing Arts. She is a member of Seattle Playwrights Circle and the Dramatists Guild. You can reach her at gobetwee@yahoo.com.